SAHMAT: The Legacy
 It's 10 years
later. As far as SAHMAT is concerned, the more things change, the more they remain the
same. "It's even more important to focus on these issues now," says Shabnam
Hashmi, secretary of the trust that was set up soon after her brother Safdar was attacked
and killed while performing a street play on January 1, 1989. The issues remain true
secularism and creative freedom, stark in the overhang of the mess over the screening of
Fire and the general rise of religious belligerence. With
this backdrop, the just-concluded 10th anniversary get-together in Delhi -- four days of
seminars, plays, exhibitions and film shows at the Springdales School -- brought together
people from all parts of India and many from Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Actress-MP Shabana Azmi expectedly raised the point about
"selective freedom of expression", saying that while she and others were against
the banning of even the controversial play Mee Nathuram Godse Boltoy, she expected a
similar courtesy extended to films like Fire.
While the she said-he said sessions carried on -- including
a passionate plea by Pakistani poet Kishwar Naheed slamming "irrationalism in the
name of nationalism that we are seeing in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh" -- a larger
point was being made. Larger even than the schism in the movement with Safdar's widow
Moloyashree moving away from SAHMAT: she's holding parallel commemorative events with her
street theatre group Jana Natya Manch.
SAHMAT plans to network actively with NGOs countrywide to
build an instant-reaction chain for protest against anything they perceive as an attack on
freedom of expression or repression. This may be the gathering's true legacy.
--Anna M M Vetticad |
